Confused by guarapachangeo...

[JohnnyConga]

I myself can play Guarapachangeo at least 3 different ways right now from 2 drums to 4...and of course it will differ from one place to another im sure(Havana,Matanzas,NY,Venezuela etc) and also what happened with Rumba will happen with GuaraP. It eventually will become Guara con Bata, or something to that effect Im sure..as all new rhythms they get explored and expanded on....Los Chinitos(the inventors) play it the way they created it..with concepts in tow...then you see Panga play it one way, and I have seen other ways as well now...learn it first from Los Chinitos then go for it on your own is what I would say......

[jorge]

Guarapachangueo is rumba and is fundamentally a conversation among 2 drummers, 2 or 3 other percussionists, singers and dancers, not "a rhythm" that is played by one drummer on several drums. The interaction among the different people playing, singing and dancing is a necessary part of the music. All the different ways you hear individual people play "guarapachangueo" are just different parts of a bigger picture. For a given melody and rhythm that the lead singer and coro are doing, just about all of the patterns you hear the Cuban drummers play can fit with the clave and the song. In that sense they are all correct. To give it the right feel so it comes out sounding like guarapachangueo, some patterns fit better than others at a given point in the song, there is an art to it. Something on the tumbador/tres dos that fits in one spot answering something the quinto said may not fit in another part of the song if the quinto played a different riff or the singer sang something different. So the same exact notes played on a given cajon or drum could sound perfect at one point in the song and sound completely wrong at another point in the song, even if they have the same relationship to the clave.

[JohnnyConga]

Rhythm is made up of sounds and silences. These sound and silences are put together to form a pattern of sounds which are repeated to create a rhythm. A rhythm has a steady beat, but it may also have different kinds of beats. Some beats may be stronger, longer, shorter or softer than others. In a single piece of music, a composer can use many different rhythms.
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If Guarapachangeo is not a 'rhythm" what do u call it????.... a rhythm can be played from one person up to 5-10 people...c'mon Jorge....smile....

[jorge]

If Guarapachangeo is not a 'rhythm" what do u call it????.... a rhythm can be played from one person up to 5-10 people...c'mon Jorge....smile....

LOL
I meant it is not a single fixed rhythm pattern like a cata part or the fixed tres dos pattern many rumberos play in an old skool guaguanco while the quinto riffs around it. It is a kind of rumba, a kind of music, like bebop is a kind of music. Sure you can teach someone to play a drumset part for bebop. Then the person can go out by themselves and play the part, but it is not really what we would call bebop. To really bring out the essence of bebop, we expect to hear different instruments playing a common theme, then solos with the drummer (and other instruments) answering back, setting up conversations in the music. The essence of the music form is in the interplay among the different players, while still keeping the characteristics that we recognize immediately as bebop. Same with a guaguanco, it is not a fixed "rhythm", it is a type of song with different parts, some of which change from bar to bar, others stay constant. If it is played right, those of us who know what guaguanco really is will recognize it immediately as guaguanco. If it is not played right, we will immediately know it is not a guaguanco, something is off. We may enjoy it, it might be awesome music, but it is not a guaguanco. It could be some other form that is influenced by guaguanco but is not. Those who don't really know what guaguanco is won't know if it is or isn't, but will know if they like it or not. Same with guarapachangueo.

[JohnnyConga]

Gracias Jorge for your clarification...I concur....

[Assaf]

Very nice, Mr Abakua
Thanks for sharing.

[Quinto Governor II]

I agree with much of what jorge said. Guarapachangeo is not nearly as much fun to play without the singing accompanying it. I think guaguanco stands up better without vocals, because of the familiarity of the sound of the quinto solo, which serves as the vocals for many of us none Cubans, or non-Latinos who don't have songs to sing or can't sing and play simultaneously.
I'm been trying to get guys that I play with to learn the single drum parts taught by Mike Spiro, as opposed to the 3 drum patterns that they are focused on. I like Mike's use of an extended variation of the tres golpe pattern as a second pattern for guarapachangeo. If one player is going to play more than one drum, I prefer no more than a single cajon.
It seems to me that what is most constant in guarapachangeo is that the phrases have to be 2 claves long, but even this is just a generalization. Most of the rules applied to Cuban music seems to me to just be generalizations, to give something for us who are new to the music to go by. Where do you see the music played the way we are taught in the beginning of our learning process?
Can anyone hear a consistent distinctive 2 clave long phrase in this performance, or is it even not a guarapachangeo? They dance guaguanco at the end. Is there a guarapachangeo or tonada dance, or are these simply just variations of playing guaguanco - rhetorically speaking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFmXZWKq5sM

[KidCuba]

I have spent 10 years studying Yoruba Andabo's "En El Callejon..." CD and can just say they are some bad ass rumberos...

I would say that video is Yoruba's style of a guarapachangueo...

[windhorse]

I have spent 10 years studying Yoruba Andabo's "En El Callejon..." CD and can just say they are some bad ass rumberos...
I would say that video is Yoruba's style of a guarapachangueo...

Interesting. I thought I could hear the classic two tone segundo of guaguanco tres dos (albeit only a few times), rather than the delayed notes of guara tres dos. It sort of doesn't matter since it's rumba because it's got clave.

It's hard to say when a four note bass roll, ending on the first strike of clave, is clearly a guara or a guagua because there's a tumba variant in guaguanco that is almost exactly that same thing where four muffled tones lead into - and end on the 1st strike. So, in that sense guara is guagua.
And now we're splitting hairs.
guara (with bass rolling into 1st strike):
| b - t b - t b - | s - t s - b b b ||
guagua (muffled tone variant):
| m - - t b t o - | b - t m - m m m ||
(and I am just talking about the four note cascade into the one, not the rest of these patterns)

The dance is rumba.. and no, nothing specific to guarapach.

[KidCuba]

Windhorse,

The "En El Callejon" era of Yoruba Andabo, tended to play their tres golpes with the open tones in a traditional Habana manner, though it did do a lot of "talking" with the other arts. The saildor tended to be more open and do improvasations.

If it is guarapachangueo or guauguanco, I'm not sure ... You would have to ask them. Their CD jackets label them as guaguanco, if my memory serves right.

I think it is fair to say, their style is influenced by guarapachangueo.

This is just all my, educated best guess, opinion.

[windhorse]

The "En El Callejon" era of Yoruba Andabo, tended to play their tres golpes with the open tones in a traditional Habana manner

Ah! I just learned something then!
Thanks!

[jorge]

A lot of times the way Yoruba Andabo played their modern rumbas back in the 90s with those members, the tres dos player plays a tres dos cajon with a tres dos drum off to the side, accenting the basses on the cajon and playing the tones on either the cajon or drum, depending on what fits best with everything else that is going on.

[guarachon63]

I can't think of a better way to learn Yoruba Andabo style Guarapachangueo, specifically Chori's style of tres-dos, than by watching these videos of the group from 1992:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL230E70DF49DD6698

Chori was a master, the inventor of that style, and as far as I can tell is hugely under-rated outside of Cuba, probably because he died before a lot of the outside interest in guarapachangueo developed.

For another piece of the puzzle, this is a great demo of what Pancho Kinto is doing on the caja and 3 batá:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8uRR7uF85c&list=FLLfwnZCq0oJa0afq6NCxbuw&index=15&feature=plpp_video

[windhorse]

In early September our group got an intensive lesson from Sandy Perez. He was completely amazing! Full of energy and bounced around like a child while he taught us rhythm after rhythm. It was rapid-fire pacing with really crazy handing that only people with GREAT technique can even hope to keep up with. I've attached the guara that he taught us and that I've been working on for a few months. Ritz is playing the tres dos (segundo) pattern the most, and I've concentrated mostly on the Salidor (tumba), but lately have been trying to grok the tres dos. The tres dos plays a two clave cycle where only the first cycle gets tones on the "four-and" and you can't hear the touches and basses. They're just timing strokes until "gung gung" right at the bombo - two. After several weeks of working on the tres dos, I still couldn't hold it more than a few minutes at our last practice. It's so tricky,, but sounds so amazing with all that space between the tones and the double basses. The quinto sounds better too because now there's added space between Salidor and tres-dos tones.
The Salidor is really slippery with all the touches between basses. It flows like rushing water and the touches are meant to be barely audible, more-so than the tres dos. I've had many lessons from Sandy at this point, but never so much and for so long, and surrounded by so many advanced players. He definitely made a huge impact on us! I HIGHLY RECOMMEND GETTING LESSONS FROM SANDY especially after you've achieved good technique.
The notation is located in my box notation page: http://mrcrowder.us/hand-drumming-music-block-form-notation/